Aldo Antolli

Service, Not Self-Interest

Aldo Antolli was born in Australia to migrant Italian and Croatian parents. His father worked on the iconic Snowy Mountain Scheme for many years. That heritage of hard work, resilience, and contribution to a new country has shaped Aldo's values throughout his life. Growing up in a household where Italian and Croatian were the languages of home, Aldo could not speak English when he started school at the age of six. Those early years were a struggle to adjust, but they also built a quiet determination in him.

He came into his own in high school, excelling in both sport and academics. That success stirred in him a drive to achieve, and it was recognised with an international scholarship, part academic and part sporting, to study in the United States. During his university years, Aldo took eighteen months away from his studies to serve with a humanitarian foundation, running an English and Business School in Nuwara Eliya, a small mountain town in the highlands of Sri Lanka, a five-hour mountainous drive from the capital Colombo, and the very source of the famous Dilmah tea that Australians will recognise from decades of television commercials. Sri Lanka was formerly known as Ceylon, which is where the name comes from.

The school offered a two-year Associate of Arts equivalent program to local children who showed genuine academic promise but had no means to access higher education. It was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious institution, celebrated throughout Sri Lanka during its almost forty years of operation, which finally came to a close in the late 1990s. For Aldo, it was his first passionate entrance into service to the vulnerable. It was a calling that would bring him full circle in his adult career.

Aldo completed a B.Sc (Hons) in Psychology at Ambassador University, Texas, graduating with High Distinction.

Aldo is married to Maxine, a local high school music teacher, and together they have two daughters: Cassia, who is studying Nursing at UTAS, and Allegra, who is completing a VET course at Hobart College. He lives in Margate and is deeply embedded in the fabric of Kingborough life.

When Aldo was elected to Kingborough Council in October 2022, he brought with him a proven track record of leading complex organisations, managing budgets, and delivering outcomes for vulnerable people, and the ambition to see the changes that so clearly needed to be made at Council level. He is now seeking the role of Mayor to bring that same leadership to the highest level of local government in Kingborough, which is so sorely needed.